


Necropolis

by Saki101



Series: Other Experiments [39]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: BAMF Lestrade, BAMF Mycroft, Bisexual Lestrade, Case Fic, Hurt Lestrade, Hurt/Comfort, Lestrade-centric, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 15:25:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saki101/pseuds/Saki101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corpses are piling up where they are least, or perhaps most, expected.<br/> </p><p>Excerpt:  “It’s not what I would have expected in a tomb.”</p><p>“No,” Mycroft said, stepping forward to stand next to Greg.  “My…forebears had unusual views on many subjects.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Necropolis

**Author's Note:**

> This story may be read alone.
> 
> It may also be read as a sequel to the Lestrade-centric [We're Sorry For Any Inconvenience](http://archiveofourown.org/works/969344) and a prequel to [Safer](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1110439). There is as well a little ficlet, [Ex Libris](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1258948), which fits in-between _Necropolis_ and _Safer_.
> 
> *** 
> 
> If you would like to see my inspiration for Mycroft's London residence within [Whitehall Court, click here](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/saki101/8198517/43396/43396_600.jpg).

Above its arteries of water, air rushed through the city like riled blood, swooping under bridges, over walls, through portals and portholes, into cracks and crevices, stirring dust and memories. 

*** 

Beyond the stone, the day waned. Shadows gathered. Mycroft clicked on the desk lamp. Its beams obscured the image on his tablet. He angled the screen away from the glare, enlarged the window and pushed play, right hand hovering over the touchpad. The camera hadn’t been in the best position and between the skylight, the cloudless day, the steam and the mirrors, there hadn’t been many clear shots. His finger struck lightly. “There,” he murmured and his finger moved across the screen. “Just there.” The skin between the tan lines was pale and vulnerable in comparison to the hardier, browned flesh above and below. Mycroft’s brow furrowed. “They’ll have faded by now.” He shut the application and stood. 

The breeze that billowed the curtains was damp, the first falling leaves of a late autumn caught up in it. Mycroft leaned against the balcony rail and stared at the opposite bank. The wheel turned slowly. The tourists would have a fine view for their fares. The foliage of the forecourt obscured most of the nearer embankment and the river, but here and there, through the tree tops, the water glimmered. Winter revealed more. _Would either view please you?_

Mycroft's phone thrummed in his pocket. He held it up. _The pathologist’s report is ready._

He pivoted, strode to the desk, pressed the button for the intercom. “With photos?”

“Not online yet. The hardcopy should be at New Scotland Yard now,” his assistant replied.

“I’ll assume monitoring,” Mycroft said. He nudged his tablet aside, woke up his laptop and sat. “Contact Alistair. Arrange for him to accompany you to the reception this evening.” Mycroft switched off the intercom, opened two windows and raised the volume. 

*** 

“Sir?” an eager voice asked through the half-open door.

Lestrade looked up from his desk with a half smile. “Rafferty, come in. How’s the settling in going?” Greg pushed his chair back as his newest Detective Sergeant entered, several files in hand. “Not homesick for Cirencester?”

“No, sir! Things are going very well,” the young officer replied. “Thank you.” He stopped in front of Greg’s desk, set the files down and took a deep breath.

“Pathology reports back on the cemetery case,” Lestrade surmised, swiping the top file from the stack. “Anything useful?” 

“Yes, sir,” Rafferty answered. “Drowned. Both of them. One approximately two weeks ago. We have an ID and a missing person’s report on him filed by his wife, ah, ex-wife.” Rafferty slid the next file on the stack towards Greg and picked up the one beneath it. “The other died in the last couple days. No ID yet.”

“Canal water,” Greg read aloud, scanning down the text.

“Dr M Hooper,” Rafferty said, squinting at the bottom of the page. “He concluded that the drowning site was the same for both men.”

“She,” Lestrade said, turning a page.

“Sir?” 

“Dr Hooper is a she.” Greg flipped open the missing person’s report. “Lived in Greenwich, worked in Canary Wharf. What was your body doing in Brent, Mr Wilkes?” Greg frowned and put the file down, started typing.

“Rafferty, your phone’s ringing,” a voice called from the outer office.

“Excuse me, sir,” Rafferty said. Greg waved a hand at him and picked up his landline.

“Dimmock,” he said into it. “Great. Yeah. The name Sebastian Wilkes ring any bells?” Greg cradled the receiver between his shoulder and his ear, clicked a couple dozen keys.

“Shad Sanderson,” Lestrade repeated, typing the name in as he listened. “Hired Sherlock. Yeah, it’s been a few years. The circus smuggling ring murders. I remember reading about it now. Yes, he was a prick to work with.” Greg hit a few more keys. “I know. He saw things none of us did. Thanks.” Greg glanced up as Rafferty returned quietly, re-focused on his computer screen. “Well, Wilkes’s corpse has turned up in a crypt out in Brent wrapped in lots of black plastic and duct tape. Him and some other bloke we haven’t identified yet.” Greg motioned for Rafferty to sit. “Yeah, maybe he took up where his dead colleague left off. You’d think he'd’ve realised that that wasn’t a good idea.” Greg looked at Rafferty who was almost bouncing in his seat. “Sure thing. Thanks, Dimmock.” Greg put down the phone and concentrated on his DS.

“That was the cemetery, sir,” Rafferty began, waving the file he still had in his hand as he spoke. “The damage to the crypt wall was more extensive than they thought and they’ve had to move more coffins for the engineers to inspect the walls and…”

“More bodies?” Greg interrupted, stretching across his desk to pluck the file from Rafferty’s hand. 

“Three, sir.” Greg raised his eyebrows. “They want to know whether they should check the whole crypt,” Rafferty continued.

Greg nodded. “Go out there with a full team this time.” Rafferty stood. Greg held up his hand for an instant before typing. “Yup. I thought so. There’re other catacombs at that cemetery that've been sealed since the war...bomb damage. We're going to need to check them, too.”

Rafferty’s eyes widened. “You think…”

“Who knows. We need to be sure though.” Greg leafed through the file he’d taken from Rafferty, noticed the gold cufflinks and the signet ring in the photo. “And who might you be?” he murmured. “No missing persons report anything like this one?” Lestrade looked up at Rafferty.

“Not that's come in yet, sir.” 

Greg nodded, checked the clock. “Tell your contact that the cemetery staff are not to move anything further until you arrive first thing tomorrow morning. Explain that we don't want to lose evidence in the repair work,” Greg said. "Get a full forensics team sorted to go with you.

“Yes, sir,” Rafferty replied and didn’t move. Greg raised his eyebrows. Rafferty sighed, eyes fixed on a framed newspaper photo atop one of the file cabinets. “I wish we still had Mr Holmes to ask for help.”

Greg swivelled in his chair to see what Rafferty was staring at and huffed. “Yeah, me, too.”

As Rafferty closed the office door, Lestrade’s mobile pinged. _You may ask me. M_

Greg scowled at his phone, then peered around the room. The postcard from Spain had been the last communication from Mycroft. It was still high up on Greg's fridge. The mobile beeped again. _Bring the files. A car will be downstairs. M_

*** 

The driver opened the car door. It had been a very short ride. “I could have walked,” Greg said.

“Best not with those files,” Anthea replied, without looking up from her Blackberry.

 _The files inside my locked briefcase, you mean?_ Greg thought, getting out. _God, John, how did you stand this? No wonder you and Sherlock want to lay low for as long as you can._ He looked back inside the car.

Anthea glanced at him, dark eyes almost smiling, dark hair falling in thick waves over her shoulders. Greg could see Alvaro’s hand tracing feminine curves through sunny, Spanish air. _It was you._ “I’m not coming in. Someone is waiting inside to show you upstairs,” she said, her attention reverting to the screen in her hand before she finished speaking. Still considering her profile, Greg closed the door. John had mentioned her, too, and her very cool brush-off. He watched the car pull away before he turned to stare up at the ornate carvings and peaked roofs of Whitehall Court. _Perhaps you are not so cool with Mycroft._

Lestrade exhaled, eyes roaming over stone balconies and gabled windows. _Never invited me here before._ Greg hadn’t texted back. He had simply gathered the files and left. _Which ones are yours, Mycroft? Are you in the old MI6 headquarters? That_ would _be very you._

*** 

Mycroft held out a snifter of brandy.

“Aren’t we still working?” Greg asked, hands remaining in place on the arms of the leather chair in which he was sat.

“I’ve found what I need for now,” Mycroft said, setting the glass on the small table next to Lestrades’s chair and walking over to the balcony doors. “We’ll be relieving you of the…Golden Signet Ring case.” 

Greg twisted around in his seat. “Are you going to explain?” he asked, regarding the straight line of Mycroft’s spine, the backwards tilt of his head as he sipped his brandy. Greg stood. He heard Mycroft sigh.

“Junior diplomat,” Mycroft said, without turning around. “Very well connected. Explicit grumbling about the inefficiency of our security, our police force. Implicit criticism of our system of government, civil procedures, foreign policy, etc., etc.” Mycroft took another drink.

“There wasn’t a missing persons report filed. Why would we even have been looking for him?” Greg asked, moving to the windows. “And why did they assume he’d been the victim of foul play?” Greg stopped beside Mycroft, watched the Eye turn. “Good-looking young bloke with more than a few quid to throw around, why not assume he was indulging in some of the many pleasures of London and lost track of a few days?”

“Pessimists?” Mycroft offered. 

Greg snorted. “Justifiably apparently. So we know where Gold Ring ended up, but we don’t know how he, or any of the other sods who’re in Bart’s morgue right now, got there.”

“Don’t you wish you could call Sherlock in on this case?” Mycroft asked.

“Yeah, I do. He would’ve loved this one. Probably would’ve terrified the conservationists out at the cemetery more than any ghosts or ghouls they thought they might run into though.” Greg stared across the river and succeeded in not smiling at how perfectly conjugated his verbs had been. “You ever hear him question a witness?” 

“Hear? No,” Mycroft said. In the glass, Greg saw Mycroft frown. “I can’t offer you the same services my brother would have, but I can join you at the cemetery tomorrow evening after all the crypts have been opened. We may both find resolutions to some cold cases.” 

In carousel colours, the brutish cubes of the South Bank Centre glowed over the water. They cast patches of light across Mycroft’s skin that shifted with each change of expression. 

“You wouldn’t prefer to be there when the crypts are unsealed?” Greg asked. 

“I’m sure your forensics team will do a commendable job of preserving any evidence.” Greg raised his eyebrows. “I would appreciate it if you would bring over the reports and the photographs as soon as you have them.”

“Because you might see something they missed,” Lestrade said. Mycroft tilted his head. The Eye threw a blue arc across his cheek. “You think everyone’s an idiot, too. You’re just more diplomatic about it.”

Mycroft walked to the fireplace, plucked a long match from an alabaster vase. “I don’t think you’re an idiot, Detective Chief Inspector.” Mycroft dragged the match along the underside of the marble mantelpiece and dropped in into the pyramid of wood and kindling in the hearth. A curl of smoke rose from it. “The room grows chilly in the evening. I often have dinner by the fire.” Mycroft looked to where Greg lingered by the balcony doors, posture and expression a study in neutrality. “Would you care to join me?” A flame leapt up from the wood shavings, its light flickering over tufted leather and polished wood. 

Greg glanced over his shoulder at the neon-painted night. “Does the contrast ever bother you?” he asked, turning back towards the fire.

“Feel free to close the drapes. I do, when it does,” Mycroft replied. He finished his brandy and stepped to the sideboard to refill his glass. 

Greg’s eyes followed. When Mycroft looked up again, the skyline was gone. “I am hungry,” Greg said. 

Mycroft smiled. “Dinner won’t take very long. There are advantages to having a hotel in the same building.”

*** 

Greg woke up to Didymous yipping. He raised his head and squinted at the bright window. There were voices in the hallway, the sound of a door slamming. The elevator dinged. Quiet returned. He fell back on his pillow and inhaled. The burning wood had had a sweet aroma; it had clung to his hair. Their meal had included flavours he couldn’t name. The labels on the wines had been written by hand. Once or twice Greg had let his eyes drift shut to savour them. 

From high shelves, Mycroft had taken down old books of maps and photographs of London and they had reminisced about the changes they had seen in the city. Greg had found himself recounting incidents he thought he had forgotten and Mycroft had listened, nodding, the firelight bringing out the red in his hair. 

Mycroft had insisted on Greg’s being driven home because of the files.

*** 

Greg sat on the ledge, the cold of the stone seeping through his raincoat. He hadn’t been able to come out to the cemetery until mid-afternoon. Three ambulances had passed him on his way in. Rafferty’s team was half-way through the last of the catacombs by then. Two bundles wrapped in rubber sheets held together by rotting twine were being loaded onto stretchers as Rafferty came to greet him.

“What kind of dates are we talking here?” Lestrade asked.

“Eighty, ninety years, roughly,” Rafferty replied. “They’ve been getting steadily older, with the occasional exception, like someone took the trouble to go deeper into the catacombs now and then.”

“Or maybe certain bodies belonged together for some reason,” Greg mused. “Quite a long-term enterprise we’re looking at here.”

“Sorting it out’s not going to be helped by the fact that the Blitz disturbed hundreds of graves, destroying some completely. There were parts of bodies and skeletons that had to be re-interred somehow with no reliable way to match them up back then and not enough manpower even if there had been.”

“Could some of those…” Greg gestured at the departing stretchers.

“Perhaps, although that wasn’t the usual procedure followed. We’ve been shown how it was supposed to be handled, depending on how much was left to work with,” Rafferty replied, stepping aside as a smaller bundle was carried past him. Greg scowled at the size. “Some of the bodies appear to have been folded in half to fit in behind the coffins in occupied niches.”

Greg ran his hand over his face and wished Sherlock were free to work with him on this, thought how he would love to knit a century of unsolved disappearances together. “Right. Lead on, then,” Greg said to Rafferty. 

 

Twigs snapped. Greg looked up as the black Jaguar slowly approached where he sat at the edge of the main chapel’s courtyard. The car fit in, inching solemnly along the rutted road, like the beginning of a funeral cortege. The driver turned the vehicle south before stopping to get out and open the back door. With a single step, Mycroft unfolded to full height beside it and Greg wondered if he practiced the manoeuvre, so that none of the gracelessness of emerging from an automobile remained in the motions.

“Detective Chief Inspector. So good of you to wait,” Mycroft said, stepping closer. Behind him the driver managed to close the car doors with barely a sound. “The rest of your team has left for the comforts of hearth and home, I conclude.”

Greg nodded and stood. “They’ve had a long day and they still have reports to write.” 

Mycroft inclined his head. “Ours will be a little longer than theirs,” he said and mounted the steps next to Lestrade. Greg followed him through the cracked stone and crumbling plaster of the colonnade, out the east side, down the stairs in front of the high doors of the chapel and across the grass between the graves. Leaves rustled and a tall yew bowed as they passed. Behind thinning clouds, the sun was setting, its scattered rays burnishing the stones they hit. Mycroft paused in front of the wrought iron doors of a tall mausoleum fashioned like a small medieval chapel. The key he drew from his coat was turned several times in the lock before the doors swung quietly open on apparently well-oiled tracks set into the stone of the floor. Mycroft extended his arm.

“Mind the steps,” he said as Greg preceded him into the dim room. The doors shut with a faint clang, the sounds of the tumblers falling into place distinct in the enclosed space. “I’ve brought torches,” Mycroft added. 

Greg began to turn to reply when the sun brightened the arches along the side wall and washed the whole room in colour. Greg stopped mid-turn. “Wow,” he breathed. He took a step back to take in all three windows at once.

“Tiffany,” Mycroft said. “My gr..eat-great grandfather was an ardent admirer of his work.”

That Mycroft had had a key to the mausoleum hadn’t necessarily meant that it belonged to his family. Greg assumed Mycroft had ways to gain access to any place to which he needed it, but it made sense that the Holmes family would have something like this.

“It’s not what I would have expected in a tomb.”

“No,” Mycroft said, stepping forward to stand next to Greg. “My…forebears had unusual views on many subjects.” 

Greg’s eyes followed the progression in the panels, all views of the sky seen through frames of flowering foliage, the first a dawn over green hills, the next depicting the brilliance of noon reflected in the blue waters of a lake and the third sunset over a field of ripe grain. His gaze lowered to the statue of the sleeping woman reclining on a marble couch under the windows, her hair spreading over tasselled cushions, a cat curled in the crook of one arm, her other hand loosely holding a book open beneath her ample bosom. He stepped closer and peered at the small letters etched into the stone pages, the shifting colours and shadows making it difficult to read. “For…”

“’…some we loved, the loveliest and the best,” Mycroft began reciting the words chiselled there.

Greg glanced at him.

Mycroft continued, eyes on the sunlit panels above the sculpture, “’That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest, have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, and one by one crept silently to rest.’” Mycroft took a breath. “Fitzgerald’s translation of the _Rubaiyat_ was very popular with the Victorians.”

Greg followed the flowing sweep of the statue’s gown, which hung over the edge of the tomb, bare feet peeping out at the hem. He crouched and ran his fingertips over the dates carved deep into the marble. There were three of them in the shadows and Greg was puzzled.

“Thirty-six,” Mycroft supplied. 

“Sorry,” Greg said, standing.

“It’s a natural impulse,” Mycroft replied. “I suppose it’s why the dates are there. We always want to know: how long?”

“Yeah, we do, don’t we?” Greg sighed. “There were three though.”

“Date of marriage.”

“That’s unusual, isn’t it?” Greg remarked, squinting down at the numbers and back up at the statue’s face. A draft drifted down from somewhere above them as the wind picked up outside. Coloured shapes dimmed and brightened over her rounded cheeks. They gave mobility to her features, as though she were breathing in her sleep, her lips slightly parted.

“The events for which certificates are issued,” Mycroft replied. “Some put their degrees after their names, or their professional associations. Résumés in stone.” He exhaled. “It seems a fashion that didn’t stick.” The mausoleum grew darker.

Greg shook his head. “We’re loosing the light,” he observed.

“It couldn’t have followed us where we’re going,” Mycroft explained, “but the torches are very bright.” He tapped Greg’s arm with one; Greg’s hand closed around it without looking away from the statue, something in the curve of the brow, the shape of the chin holding his attention. 

As if affronted, the sun blazed through the windows, its angle slightly different than it had been before. Shafts of violet and indigo fell from high on the rear wall, prisms flickered over the stone. Greg glanced to the side and up, drew in a sudden breath. “I’ve never…” he said. He left off the rest of the exclamation, his eyes roaming over the deep glow of the window that reached into the apex of the peaked roof.

Mycroft took a step to the side and studied Greg’s upturned face. Greg raised his hand towards the illuminated wall. His mouth opened and closed again without speaking, his arm sinking back to his side. He tilted his head. “They twinkle. How’s that?” 

“Faceted stones,” Mycroft replied. “Citrine, topaz, amythest. Now and then one falls out and needs replacing.” 

The light faded again, the colours draining away. Greg switched on his torch, but the stained glass was nearly opaque. He brought the beam down, noticed the kneeling statue silhouetted in front of the lower panels. Greg stepped closer, played the torchlight over the youthful features, along the upraised telescope angled towards the window. “Christ, lost a son young, too.” And Greg felt the pang that he always felt at a crime scene when a child or a teenager lay before him and the thought of the parents' faces when he had to inform them loomed before him. He often sent Charlotte a text when he got home afterwards, just to say hello, just to see her answer appear on his screen.

He flicked the beam down to the dates and found only one. Greg arced the light back to the woman’s statue, down to her dates. The young man was clearly her child, the sculptor clearly talented.

“Didn’t have the heart to enter the date of death for the boy?” Lestrade mused aloud.

“Something like that,” Mycroft said, “but he didn’t die young. The statues were all commissioned at the same time.” Greg let out a breath and Mycroft smiled. “He grew up to be an astronomer.” Mycroft paused, his torchlight playing over the floor as he spoke. “How do you do it, Inspector?” he asked.

“What?” Greg continued to study the details of the second statue, the astrolabe by the boy’s knee, the unfurled scroll hanging over the edge of the tomb with the fine lines of the orbits of the planets and the sun marked out. Greg touched the earth at the centre of the diagram with his fingertip, remembered asking Sherlock about what John had written on his blog regarding Sherlock’s ignorance of basic astronomy. 

“With such an empathetic nature, how do you do your job?” Mycroft clarified.

Greg huffed. “I worry about losing it…the empathy. I don’t think I could do my job without it.” He turned towards Mycroft, his brows drawn. The light of his torch illuminated the face of a third statue behind Mycroft and Greg stopped. “Who…?” he said and Mycroft took a step away as Greg moved closer. He ran the light over the sole date below the figure. Greg thought about Sherlock’s headstone in another cemetery with no date at all. He ran the light more carefully over the reclining form, head propped on an elbow, eyes focussed across the mausoleum at the woman’s statue, other hand steadying an alembic resting atop several open books. The clothing and the hair style matched the date below the statue, but the face was his friend’s. Greg glanced towards Mycroft and then shifted his light once again towards the star-gazing boy and the sleeping woman. He saw the sharp nose, the thin, arched brows. “Strong family resemblances,” he murmured. 

Mycroft nodded. 

A slight whirr was audible in the silence. A chime sounded, the note light and tinkling. It struck again. Mycroft watched Greg silently begin to count, an index finger tapping against the metal torch in his hand. “Twelve?” Greg asked. 

“Behind you,” Mycroft said. Greg pivoted, cast the beam of his torch around and above the doorway. The golden sunburst reflected back the light. In its centre two clock hands pointed up. As he watched, they quivered, but didn’t move.

“Broken?” Greg asked.

“No,” Mycroft answered. “It’s meant to always be midnight, suspended between one day and the next and yet it chimes the quarter hours and strikes twelve every hour.” He cleared his throat. “Very romantic, the Victorians. And a bit macabre.”

There was a flash of colour as the setting sun made one last appearance before it sank below the horizon. Mycroft turned on his torch and aimed it at the compass rose in the floor. He bent and inserted the long key into the letter E and twisted. He handed his torch to Greg and using the key as a handle, lifted a circle of stone, its hinges disguised in the border of brass around the rose. Coloured light streaked through the glass rays set in the stone as Mycroft removed the key and gently lowered the slab to the floor on the other side of the opening. Greg leaned forward and lit the well by his feet. In the darkness gold gleamed. Mycroft reached out for a torch. “After you,” he said.

“I didn’t realise there were individual crypts as well,” Greg replied and lit the top step fully before placing his weight on it. 

“They aren’t included on the maps available to the public,” Mycroft said. “Mind the stairs. They can be slippery,” he warned, adjusting the beam of his torch, so it wouldn’t blind Lestrade. When he heard Greg’s shoes on the tiles below, Mycroft followed. 

The light of Greg’s torch was bouncing off the glittering walls before Mycroft joined him. “I feel like I’m in St Paul’s,” Greg whispered, wondering why he had dropped his voice and rotating full circle to take in the mosaic murals of nineteenth-century London along the river. 

“Yes, it’s also Richmond’s work,” Mycroft replied.

“But the rest of your family decided not to use it?” Lestrade couldn’t help asking, as it seemed that it wasn't only Sherlock who had shunned the family vault. Of course, Sherlock hadn’t really been dead.

“The vaults are beneath us,” Mycroft said, tapping a well-shod foot on the geometric designs of the floor.

Greg played his light over it and realised that the brass lines running between the different coloured stone formed rectangles in the pattern. He didn’t see any inscriptions though. _Less individualised, for the later family members?_ Greg aimed his torch at the ceiling, found the grillwork that let in air from the room above. “On a sunny day, the light would get down here,” Greg remarked. The pattern on the ceiling was a twilit sky with the sun and the moon and the evening star all represented. “Place like this, could almost reconcile a bloke to dying,” he added.

“Almost,” Mycroft agreed. “I imagine that was the idea.”

Greg heard the sound of metal against metal and turned to find Mycroft easing open a panel in the south wall displacing a view of the naval college and the Greenwich observatory. In an instant, Greg was behind Mycroft, peering around him into the dimness. “Tunnels,” he said quietly, feeling the dampness of the air on his face.

Mycroft nodded and reached around the edge of the door to retrieve the key. “I’m going to lock it behind us. Switch off your torch,” he directed and clicked off his own. “Stay close. I know the turnings well.”

Greg quenched his light and followed Mycroft into the tunnel, waited for the soft clicks of the key turning in the lock. All light was gone. Only a faint draft indicated which way at least one exit to the tunnels lay. Mycroft touched Greg’s elbow and headed towards it, the leather of his shoes surprisingly silent. Greg blinked and saw nothing more when he opened his eyes. He took a step forward and reached out with his hand. The feel of soft wool felt surprisingly comforting. He left his hand on Mycroft’s shoulder and followed noiselessly.

The air grew fresher. “Hello?” a voice said not far in front of them. 

Mycroft stopped a half-step before Greg did. His chin brushed against Mycroft’s shoulder. Greg opened his mouth to breathe as quietly as possible. They listened. 

“Can you hear me?” 

Greg felt Mycroft’s back stiffen.

“The reception’s awful. I’m not far.” There was a whistle and a bark. “Yeah, I left work late. I’ll be at the bridge in a couple minutes.” 

There was the crinkle of a packet. _Cigarettes,_ Greg thought wistfully. “Love you, too. Bye.” The last words were less distinct. Greg felt Mycroft take a deep breath. Greg inhaled as well, caught a whiff of tobacco. 

Mycroft moved again. The gloom lessened. Greg proceeded, almost abreast. Through a square of ornamental grillwork he saw the canal. A cyclist whizzed by on the tow path. A jogger passed in the opposite direction. Greg felt Mycroft reach forward, felt his wrist twist one way and then the other. Someone laughed. A couple strolled into view. The man bent to whisper something to his companion. She laughed again. A boat motored by. Mycroft tugged on Greg’s sleeve, drew back and turned away from the door. Once more, hand on Mycroft’s shoulder, Greg followed.

The faint light disappeared behind them as they retraced their steps. Suddenly, Mycroft stopped. Beneath his hand, Greg felt the shift of Mycroft’s muscles. Nearly soundlessly, a door slid along metal tracks. There were three soft clicks and Mycroft beamed dimmed torchlight ahead of them. The yellow of police tape was visible down the central corridor of the catacombs beneath the main chapel. Greg chastised himself for not thinking that there might have been other ways into the catacombs, but when he had walked through the same crypt at the end of the day, the long-winded inscription on the other side of the door had fooled him and his officers into mistaking it for a commemorative plaque and nothing more. Mycroft slid the panel closed and re-locked it.

*** 

They emerged into the night air. A light drizzle blurred the city lights at the edges of the cemetery and made them duck as they hurried to the colonnade. 

“Dinner?” Mycroft enquired as they approached the vehicle waiting at the end of the passage.

They had been silent for so long, the utterance startled Greg. “I need to check the morgue first,” Greg replied. “Most of the bodies had already been removed by the time I got here.”

The driver held the car door open for them and Greg slid in. “Of course,” Mycroft said as the door shut after them. “I shall accompany you.” 

Greg nodded and let his head fall back against the leather seat. He closed his eyes and reviewed the data they had collected, but not yet discussed. He wondered how much more information Mycroft might share, how many bodies, or what was left of them, might disappear from Bart’s and no longer be the Met’s concern.

His fingers twitched slightly against the leather cushions, feeling instead the sense of warmth soaking through soft wool in the dark. There were cases to solve, old and new apparently intricately related. There was no sense sifting through the partial information until they had the reports on the bodies, so he pushed it all aside, and let shards of colour flash behind his eyelids over images of statues that resembled people he knew. Quite possibly that was more intriguing than anything else he’d seen that day. He took a deep breath, stretched his legs out in front of him and listened to the soft click of the keys on Mycroft’s phone while his mind wandered.

*** 

“Gregory.”

There was a hand on his arm.

“Gregory, we’re at Bart’s.” The hand tightened briefly. It disappeared. There was a rush of cool air and traffic noise. “Drive him home. I should be done by the time you return.” The car door closed.

Greg sat up, head turning from side to side. The car was pulling away from the kerb. He was alone in the back seat. “Wait!” he called. The car stopped, reversed, locks disengaging. Greg jumped out. “Wait,” he called again and Mycroft paused at the entrance to the hospital.

“God, I fell asleep,” he said when he caught up to Mycroft. “You should have woken me.” 

Mycroft opened the door and motioned Greg through, turning his head only slightly as they proceeded down the corridor. “I tried and failed,” Mycroft remarked. They had reached the door to the morgue. Mycroft smiled faintly as he pushed it open. “You must have been very tired and felt very secure.” 

*** 

Greg had his feet up on an ottoman, shoes off, in front of the hearth. The drapes were drawn over the rain-lashed balcony doors, the room lit only by the fire and a floor lamp near one of the bookcases. “Well, at least you have one more answer,” he said. 

Mycroft carried a decanter from the sideboard across the room. The cut-glass caught the flames as he passed, threw sparks over the wood panelling. He refilled the glass on the table beside Greg’s chair. “We know where he’s been, but not how much he divulged before he got there,” Mycroft replied. “I thought we might find more than one other of ours.”

Greg took the glass, held it up, observed the colours changing in the liquid. “It will be months before the forensics are finished with all of it,” he said. “The newest two especially. They were left with far too much evidence on them.”

“Short-staffed, perhaps,” Mycroft remarked, moving back to the sideboard.

“Someone unavailable who usually prepared the bodies?” Greg mused aloud.

“And who placed them more discreetly in the crypt, behind sealed vaults or in the oldest niches,” Mycroft added. “Of course, they couldn’t have predicted lightning striking at ground level and damaging the foundation wall.” 

“During the day, too. Some people would call that a sign,” Greg said.

Mycroft tsked. “A hundred years? Very slow response time.” He set down his glass near his seat and slipped off his jacket, meandered away to hang it over the desk chair. Greg’s eyes followed. The satin back of the waistcoat shimmered, the white shirt sleeves bright in the gloom. Mycroft turned back towards Greg. The tie had departed before dinner. “Perhaps one of the latest victims was specially favoured,” Mycroft suggested.

Greg smiled, his gaze dropping slowly from the open shirt collar to the gleam of the watch chain at Mycroft’s waist. “I shouldn’t drink anymore,” he said, putting his glass down. “I won’t be able to move.”

“You needn’t,” Mycroft said, collecting his drink and relocating to the hearth. He added a log to the fire. “I have a guest room. If we weren’t both trying not to smoke, it would be time for cigars and leisurely conversation, time to leave work behind for a while.” 

Greg picked his glass back up, stared over the rim at Mycroft poking at the fire. Embers tinkled as they fell through the grate. “I look rumpled enough as it is,” he laughed. “I’d look pretty bad tomorrow in these.” He flicked his fingers towards his outstretched legs.

Mycroft lifted the tip of a half-burnt log, balanced its end against another. Flames surged up into the opening. “They could be cleaned and pressed by morning.” He glanced towards Greg, put the poker back in its stand. “Hotel on the premises, remember?” 

Greg took a sip of the brandy and slid a little lower in the chair. “I don’t really feel like moving,” he said. 

“It’s settled, then,” Mycroft said, taking up his glass and leaning on the mantelpiece.

“Do you ever really do that?” Greg asked. “Leave the work behind?” He took another sip, let the liquid trickle hot down his throat as he gazed at the long silhouette before the fire. He wondered if the pose was deliberate. It was very flattering. 

“Occasionally,” Mycroft answered.

Greg snorted. “Me, too,” he said. “I’ve been trying to be mindful of doing it more often. Been making some progress.” He took another drink. “ _Do_ you have any?”

Mycroft lifted his chin and his eyebrows, elbow still on the mantelpiece, one leg bent and crossed in front of the other.

“Cigars?” Greg clarified.

Mycroft smiled. “In fact, I do.”

Greg lowered his glass and grinned. 

 

Mycroft rested a hand on the back of Greg’s chair and leaned down to hold the lit cedar strip near the foot of the cigar. Greg puffed lightly as he turned it. When the edges of the leaf glowed and Greg inhaled deeply, Mycroft dropped the wood into the ashtray and straightened. Holding the smoke a moment, Greg tilted his head back and blew a series of perfectly-formed circles into the air. “Haven’t done that in a while,” he said, glancing at the band of the cigar before inhaling again. He looked up at Mycroft, whose eyes were firmly trained on Greg’s mouth. Greg exhaled again, but only one o floated into the air before he laughed the rest of the smoke into the room. “God, that’s good. A cigarette’ll taste like burning rubbish after this.” 

Mycroft stepped back to the fireplace and crouched to light another strip of wood. 

“King of Denmark, huh?” Greg said. “Never seen them. Get them on your travels?” 

“They were a gift,” Mycroft said. 

The smoke soured in Greg’s mouth. He blew it out in a long stream.

Mycroft stood and turned, holding the lit cigar aloft. He exhaled slowly, noted Greg’s expression. “From the Queen of Denmark.”

“Work has a few perks, then,” Greg said and drew in another mouthful of sweet smoke. 

“It would have been rude to decline.” Mycroft smiled and watched the grin re-form on Greg’s lips.

 

The cigars were gone. Their aroma hung gently in the air, the flavour in his mouth. Greg swirled the brandy left in his glass, but didn’t take a sip. Beyond the amber lights in the liquor, he watched the flames curve around the new log Mycroft had just set in the hearth.

“Secrecy always been a thing with your family?” Greg asked.

Mycroft pivoted on the balls of his feet, still crouched by the fire and angled his head.

“There were no names on the outside. I looked,” Greg said. “Not over the door or anywhere. I notice these things, you know.” _I have perhaps had too much brandy._

“Ah, the eye of the detective. Of course,” Mycroft said and stood, poker still in hand. “What _did_ you see over the door?” he asked, rearranging the wood slightly with the point of the poker.

Greg looked up at the scenes painted on the high ceiling. There were people on clouds. “Animals,” he replied, “under a large tree. Oak, I think.” He paused to take a breath. “I always liked oak trees. Liked the acorns. Liked their colour,” he added, studying the highlights in Mycroft’s hair. “It’s a warm colour.”

Mycroft stood very still. “What else did you see?”

“A snake coiled around the tree and a lion lying at the bottom of it,” Greg said.

“Well, we like to think of it more as a serpent,” Mycroft replied. “Did you notice the wings?” 

Greg shook his head. “So sort of a dragon?”

Mycroft nodded. “Anything more?” 

Greg squinted at the ceiling and remembered the bas relief, the branches extending far enough out from the building to afford protection from the rain for a person opening the door. “Beautiful bit of carving,” Greg murmured. “The branches and the leaves.” He was silent for a moment. “In the tree, there’s a bird. A large one on the lowest branch, looking out from the leaves.”

“An eagle,” Mycroft supplied.

“It was watching something,” Greg continued, “on the ground.” He paused. “That’s all I’ve got.” He looked at Mycroft. “Family crest?”

“Not exactly,” Mycroft said and walked to the bookcases, pushed the ladder a few feet along its track and climbed. Greg watched him stretch to the highest shelf and extract a tall, thin book from the closely-packed volumes. As he walked towards Greg, Mycroft leafed through the pages. “There you go,” he said and set the book on Greg’s knees.

Greg put his glass aside and leaned forward, tilting the book towards the firelight to examine the engraving. “I see the wings,” he said, “and the fangs…oh, that’s what the eagle was tracking, a rabbit half behind the tree.” Greg dropped his feet to the floor and slid nearer to the edge of his seat. “The serpent was about to catch the rabbit, but the lion has his paw on the snake’s neck. 

Mycroft pulled the ottoman out of the firelight and sat down. Greg hunched over the picture. “There’s a mouse standing on the lion’s paw,” he said. He looked over at Mycroft. “The fable of the lion and the mouse?” Mycroft nodded. Greg returned to the picture. “The oak hiding the king?” he asked and Mycroft nodded again.

“Is the eagle going to catch the rabbit or is he looking out for him?” Greg asked. “Or is he afraid of the lion?”

“One wonders,” Mycroft said and the smile was clear in his voice. “But it’s not a rabbit.”

Greg frowned. “It’s not…” He considered the long ears and the one long foot visible atop a root of the oak. “A hare. It’s a hare.” Greg scanned the bottom of the engraving carefully. “No tortoise though.”

Mycroft chuckled. “No, no tortoise.”

“So why is the distinction important?” Greg asked.

“Think about it a bit,” Mycroft suggested and Greg heard a soft echo of Sherlock’s exasperated cries of ‘Think!’.

Greg settled back in the chair, book on his lap. “We’ve got an oak tree, a lion, a mouse, a serpent, an eagle and a hare.” He glanced at Mycroft. Greg was certain he’d never seen such a wide smile on his face. “A hare, an eagle, a serpent, a mouse, a lion and an oak,” Greg repeated. He was going to be back to the cemetery soon enough. He would take a good look at the sculpture in daylight. “Hare, oak, lion, mouse, serpent, eagle,” he muttered. 

Mycroft laughed.

Greg glared at him. “I’ve had a lot to drink tonight, mate, and you give me puzzles.” _Puzzles._ Greg quieted. _Hare. Oak. Lion. Mouse. Serpent. Eagle._ “Hare, oak, lion, mouse, eagle, serpent,” he chanted. “They couldn’t just spell out the name, could they? It’s genetic, yeah?” He snatched his brandy off the side table, finished it and grinned at Mycroft. “God, I love it! I’m probably going to dream of snakes and eagles and whatnot tonight. Where is this guest room, then.”

*** 

The tap on the door was very discreet.

“Come in, Rafferty,” Greg called from where he stood by a file cabinet.

Rafferty’s sunny face peeked around the door and located Greg before he pushed it completely open and entered. “’Afternoon, sir,” he said, looking Greg up and down. “Press conference, sir?”

Greg shook his head, glanced down and resisted pointing out that he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn the day before. The knife edge-sharp crease in his trousers caught his eye. _Just pressed within an inch of their life…and the tie..._ The tie was different, one of Mycroft’s, Greg’s own inexplicably misplaced. The tie was one Greg had thought looked particularly well on Mycroft, a golden tone, a bit brighter than he usually wore. Mycroft had probably noticed. _Of course, you noticed._

Greg indicated the seat in front of his desk, turned back to his chair. “What can I do for you?”

Rafferty sat, held up the files he was carrying. “More pathology reports from the cemetery case, sir. Would you like to look them over before I go check on the team?”

Lestrade considered the pile of paper in his outbox and felt rather proud. He had been extremely efficient all morning. _A good night’s sleep can do that._ “Good timing,” Greg said, “I’ll go out to the cemetery with you.” _And give that metal plaque a good rap and marvel at the hollow sound it makes._

Rafferty beamed. “Oh, and Dr Hooper said that two of the bodies have been removed from St Bartholomew’s Hospital. She included a copy of a notice she received from the Foreign Office stating that those remains will no longer be the concern of St Bart’s or the Met, sir. We haven’t received our copy though. Should I call and check on that, sir?”

“No, need,” Greg replied. “I’m certain we will receive our formal notice, too.”

Rafferty nodded solemnly. “Never had that happen in Cirencester, sir.” Greg waited for Rafferty to make his point. “Sorry, sir. London. I’m not used to it yet, I guess.”

“Not a problem, Rafferty,” Greg responded. “Takes time to adjust.” 

*** 

The police cars disappeared between the tombs and the trees. Greg shoved his hands in his pockets and drew his coat closed against the wind scouring the early evening sky clear of clouds. 

It had, perhaps, been unfair to let Rafferty depart with the impression that it was simply Lestrade’s experienced instinct that had led him to tap on the metal panel at the east end of the crypt. The look on Rafferty’s face had been priceless when the summoned cemetery employee had fit a key into the scrollwork along the edge of the inscription and turned it twice to slide the panel aside. The lad had gaped into the tiled tunnel revealed beyond. He’d recovered quickly enough to ask whether it connected to the nearby tube station. Lestrade had observed the caretaker carefully as the man explained how the original tunnel to the canal had been extended north when the nearby station had opened in the mid-1800s and how the cemetery had had a private platform at which funeral trains could discharge mourners and mourned alike to make their way to the chapels without braving inclement weather. Jones had not appeared anxious at all, rather chuffed, in fact, to have an audience for what had obviously been a speech well-honed by decades of repetition.

“We used to include these in the tours years ago,” Jones had said, switching on the bare electric lamps strung along the centre of the ceiling and pointing to the ornate gas fixtures that had once lit the subterranean corridor. They had walked far enough to inspect the rusty iron gates closing off access in the direction of the station and one of the other catacombs. “The south side’s still used occasionally though,” Jones informed them and Rafferty’s face had lit up. “The entrances to the private crypts that side of the cemetery are down this way,” Jones had said as he turned and pointed towards the canal. “A few families have electrified the gaslights by their doors, but most have just been capped off.”

They had ambled past a number of private entrances, with an eye out for signs of tampering, Rafferty peppering the older man with questions. Jones, in return, was happy to expand on any point. Greg tried not to appear excessively interested in the polished brass door featuring a lion and a snake beneath a tree. Rafferty asked the question for him.

“Whose is that?” he had enquired, reaching out to touch the door. Jones flicked a switch so the lamp beside the door lit with an electric bulb that mimicked a flame, then he stood back a moment for the effect to be appreciated. 

“One of the loveliest crypts in the cemetery, this one,” he said. “Not the largest, but certainly the best maintained.” Jones looked at Rafferty. “Family still in London, you see. So many have died out or moved away.”

“But who are they?” Rafferty persisted.

“We’re not allowed to say. Some of the crypts are like that. Some of the graves, too. We’ve records, naturally, but they’re confidential.” He glanced at Lestrade. “Unless you need them for your investigation, of course.” 

Greg shook his head. “Not as yet anyway.” 

The man looked relieved. He pointed at the door. “You can tell they’re doctors though. See the snake curled around the tree?” 

Rafferty took a step back to stare at the design. “That’s clever.”

“Most of the old crypts are Victorian era,” Jones said. “Fond of symbols and secret signs, they were. You can find them all over the cemetery, if you know how to look.”

Rafferty moved closer again. “What about the eagle in the branches and the lion?” he asked.

Jones tapped the side of his nose. “Well-connected folk,” he replied. He dropped his voice. “I’ve never seen inside,” he said. “Never been a burial I know of while I’ve been here and I’ve been here a long time. My pa told me it’s beautiful though and you can sort of make out the stained glass from outside. You should stop and have a look if you have a minute before you go.”

The Holmes’s door was not the only one along the passageway to boast engravings and Jones cheerily pointed out the significance of several designs as they made their way towards the canal. Rafferty peered down a turning they did not take and Jones didn’t need to be asked to explain that it wound past private crypts west of them and the third, large catacomb.

“There are mausoleums scattered about the cemetery, but many were set like houses along an avenue. There’re two clusters down that way. They don’t all have crypts though. Many just have a chamber above ground, but a few of those were built with a stairway leading down here, so folk could pay their respects privately.” 

Rafferty and Lestrade exchanged a glance over Jones’s back as he bent to turn the key in the lock of the door to the canal. “Humph. Someone’s oiled this. Few weeks back I thought I’d break the key off opening it when we had a delivery of bricks for the restoration work.” He waved back towards the chapel crypt as the door swung silently inwards. Jones eyed the hinges. “Those, too,” he said. “Sounded like cats in heat last time.” He swung the door back and forth twice, brow furrowed, before leading them outside. “I meant to come back and do it myself,” he grumbled. He flung his arm out towards the water. “And here we are." 

They took a collective deep breath of the fresh air. A garishly-painted boat chugged away from its mooring site on the other side of the canal. Two sea gulls dove, screeching for possession of something bobbing in the boat’s wake. 

Jones tapped his foot on the cement walkway and Rafferty and Lestrade looked down. “You can still see what’s left of the tracks,” he explained. “We had trolleys that ran right from the canal edge through the tunnels to the crypts, or the chapels if there was to be a service, so the coffins didn’t need to be carried. The families went that way, through the South Gates.” Jones pointed to an ivy-covered arch in the wrought iron fence that ran along the top of the embankment; the heavy, padlocked chain holding the gates closed was visible from where they stood. Rafferty strolled over, crouched to take a closer look. 

“Why not take the coffins through here?” he asked as he lifted the padlock. The chain rattled between the bars and the gates creaked.

“They’d’ve needed a carriage just for the short journey through the cemetery and the paths get slippery in the rain,” Jones replied, stepping nearer. “Of course, if the caskets came by carriage through any of the land gates, they just carried on. But if they came by boat or train, we used the tunnels.” He looked back over the water. “They stopped using the canal much when I was still a lad. I don’t remember the trains, but my pa liked to talk about them. He kept our tracks in good nick. He was proud of that.”

“It sounds like a transport hub,” Rafferty remarked, looking around in the shrubs that grew through the fence palings. “Was there enough traffic for that?”

Lestrade and Jones stared at Rafferty. “Not much for history, are you?” Jones said.

Rafferty looked up. “More for science, I suppose,” he admitted.

“People hardly die these days,” Jones huffed and lifted his chin towards the roofs of the mausoleums and spires of the monuments visible over the fencing. “When this was built, people died at about five times the rate they do now. If you loved anyone, odds are you’d be burying them. Not just your parents and grandparents, but your children and grandchildren, your husband or wife, your friends, and not just when they was old. So people wanted monuments to them and to themselves. Something that would last.” Jones sighed. “Death was a booming business.” Jones’s gaze went up to the sky and Lestrade clapped him on the back.

“You miss the tours, yeah?” Lestrade said.

Jones nodded. “I used to do special ones leading up to All Hallow’s Eve. I wore my grandpa’s mourning suit for that.” He patted his belly. “Until it didn’t fit anymore.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They’ve got a couple young people doing them now, but just up top. They get their history a bit muddled, but they’re prettier to look at than me.” He shook his head. “Right, then. If you’re done, I should get you gentlemen back and lock up.”

**** 

In the distance, Greg heard the gates clanging shut after the police cars. A couple cemetery employees exchanged farewells on the other side. It would be a while before the noise of rush hour began in earnest. The wind died. The grounds grew quieter. As he walked towards the Holmes crypt, the master keys for the gates and the tunnel entrances jangled by his side. The sound was reassuring.

He tried to ignore the stark tales the dates on the tombstones told. The tributes to status and achievement were easy enough to pass with a nod to their grandeur, but the ones that drew him from his path were the [representations of grief](http://saki101.tumblr.com/post/65107197003/images-for-necropolis-by-saki101-excerpt-is). By the time he had reached the door sheltered by the stone oak, he had decided that if spirits walked the silent avenues with him, they were the shades of the mourners and not the mourned. Most had not erected effigies to their grief, but enough had given form to the emotion to serve for all, he thought. No doubt some who lay beneath the lawns had died unmourned, perhaps deservedly so, but many had clearly left someone disconsolate behind. Greg leaned against the door, remembering the desolation on John’s face, the anguish he had felt when he thought John might have lost Sherlock twice. As a detective, he’d seen enough people confront death, try to feign one reaction or another to it. The sculptors had got it right, it was the language of the body more than any words that spoke of grief. And was not grief but a stage of love? 

“Enough,” Greg whispered. “I’m glad you’re not here to read my mind and ridicule me, Sherlock.” He pushed away from the doorframe, drew his coat closed against the reviving breeze. _Or do you tread more lightly in that area these days?_

He scrutinised the carving above the door, didn’t find anything he hadn’t seen in the drawing except the star pattern that formed the border. He turned towards the canal and stopped, eyes narrowing. Across the water, something flashed in the high branches of an evergreen. Greg noted the location and strode towards the eastern gates, keys in hand.

 

Greg peered up through the branches. They were shifting with the wind, but the metal casings of the cameras were bright and new, the scuff marks on the side of the tree fresh. _When did you have those installed, Mycroft? Yesterday?_ Greg pulled out his phone as a pair of joggers passed, eying him suspiciously and tried to look less like a pervert lurking in the bushes. He moved closer to the path and stood, appearing to check his messages. The lower camera had appeared to be angled towards the door of the tunnel. The higher one would probably have a view over the cemetery. _God, you could probably see me. Good thing I didn’t need to wipe a tear from my eye. Christ._

His phone buzzed in his hand. _Harrison e-mailed to say there’s a letter from the Foreign Office waiting for you, sir._ A cyclist swerved on the path to avoid Lestrade. Greg took a step back. A boat switched on its running lights as it cleared the western bridge. His phone buzzed again. _The eastbound traffic’s terrible, sir. Water main ruptured. I know the situation doesn’t call for the siren._ Greg chuckled. 

“Have a light?”

Greg turned to see a man with a fishing pole holding a cigarette between his fingers. “I dropped my last match in the water.” 

Lestrade patted his pockets and offered a lighter. “Keep it,” he said. “I’m trying to quit.”

The man lit his cigarette and handed the lighter back. “Yeah, me, too,” he sighed and continued on down the path. Another cyclist veered around him. At least Greg hoped it was a different cyclist.

The boat pulled up across the canal. A tall man threw a rope out, climbed after it and secured it to the bank. Greg strolled towards the boat to get a better look at its name.

“Yes, yes, I’m running late again!” a woman said behind Lestrade. She powered past, briefcase brushing against him as she went. “Order something for me. You know what,” she said and he could hear her breathing. “Five, six minutes, tops.”

Greg followed. The light was fading, but the boat was yellow and the lettering black: Cerberus. “OK,” Greg murmured and walked a little faster towards the bridge. The view would be good from there.

*** 

It was a two-note chime that pulled Mycroft’s attention away from the file he was reading. He tapped the tablet on the seat next to him and the screen split into two windows, the left showing the north side of the canal and a boat docking. Mycroft enlarged the window. 

His mobile vibrated, he slid it open and listened. “Meet me there,” he said. As he spoke, the car turned. High in a pine tree, a camera swivelled west.

On the screen, a tall man climbed back into a light-coloured boat. In the corner window, Mycroft saw Lestrade walk onto a bridge and stop in the middle to light a cigarette.

“In the line of duty, Inspector,” Mycroft said, splitting the screen equally again. 

*** 

Lestrade took one puff and wrinkled his nose. “I thought that was going to happen,” he muttered and let the cigarette burn between his fingers, raising it near his mouth from time to time.

He let it fall into the water when the man aboard the boat lifted a hand trolley over the side and then hefted a large bundle onto his shoulder and followed it.

Greg tapped rapidly. _Return to cemetery. Siren authorised. Request back-up. One suspect unloading by canal. Tunnel unlocked. Boat: yellow, name Cerberus._

The suspect and his cargo disappeared into the tunnel. Greg ran to the end of the bridge and down the stairs to the canal.

*** 

There was no one else on the boat, no one alive anyway. Greg found a body wedged in the prow, packaged as the other recent bodies had been. He clicked rapidly with his phone and e-mailed the photos of the corpse and the boat’s registration papers to Harrison. He was searching the pockets of the deceased when the boat swayed.

Greg turned fast, but not fast enough to knock the raised knife completely away. It slashed through his clothes, into the flesh of his shoulder. Whirling in the opposite direction, hands clasped, he caught his assailant across the chest. The man grunted, the knife clattering to the bottom of the boat. The blow knocked him sideways against the rail and Greg followed the advantage, his announcement of his status as a police officer growled close to the man’s ear. It made him struggle harder against Greg’s hold around his shoulders, trying to throw Greg’s weight off his chest. He flung his head back and his leg came up between Greg’s with a force that loosened Greg’s grip. Behind him the top rail gave way and they both pitched into the canal. 

If the water was cold, Greg didn’t notice. He scrabbled to regain a hold on the other man, caught his jacket and clung. His shoulder stung, but he gripped harder and struck out blindly with his knee. The man twisted and thrashed, something hard hit the side of Greg’s head and he let go, inhaling water as he did.

Greg broke the surface, coughing, sodden clothes weighing him down. He shook water from his face, pulled air into his lungs and grasped at shadows. He found the mooring rope in his hand, heard splashing to his left. Momentarily, the loop of rope impeded his surge towards the sound. Already, the man had one leg out of the water. Greg lunged at his dangling foot. 

“Stay on your knees.” Greg heard the words, a familiar voice. _Not Rafferty’s. Not one of their officers._ He caught the foot, felt the muscles in the lean calf tighten. _Cyclist or runner._ He pulled the manacles from his pocket. The cuff barely closed. He grabbed an iron rung in the canal wall, found a foothold on another below the water, pulled himself higher and reached for the other leg. The sole of the shoe scraped past the side of Greg’s head. The fingers of one hand clenched around the metal bar, the others dug into the cloth of the man’s trousers. There was the sharp rap of steel against cement, the soft patter of fragments landing. 

“Do you understand now?” the voice asked, growing closer.

The man stopped struggling, his breathing audible, long rasps in and out. The muscles of his leg tightened further beneath Greg’s hand. Greg clicked the other cuff into place.

 _Mycroft?_ Greg opened his mouth to ask aloud, closed it without speaking the name. “Why are you here?” he said instead and pulled himself the rest of the way out of the canal, eyes warily on his assailant. The man was raised on his elbows, the rest of his body flat, both legs hanging over the side.

“Your back-up appears to have been delayed.” Mycroft stepped into the dim light along the walkway, his umbrella extended before him almost casually, as though he might have been pointing out a feature along the path. A red dot wavered on the pavement by the assailant’s hands. “Traffic, you know.”

*** 

“Was that MI5, sir?” Rafferty asked, voice hushed, as they watched the canal boat glide away with the assailant. 

“Five or six,” Greg replied. “We’ll find out when we get the paperwork.” He sighed. “If we get the paperwork. Might just be a phone call to the chief superintendent.”

Rafferty raised his eyebrows and nodded. Greg smiled. “You finish up here. I’m going to have to stop by A&E. This probably needs stitches.” He patted his shoulder.

Rafferty shifted his torchlight, saw the red staining Lestrade’s white shirt. “Sir! I’ll call the ambulance back. It won’t be far.”

“No need, officer,” a crisp voice replied. “We can transport the Detective Inspector to hospital.” Mycroft paused near Rafferty and tapped the pavement lightly with the tip of his umbrella. Reflexively, Greg tensed for another bullet round. From the corner of his eye, Mycroft noted the slight movement. The creases around his eyes deepened, and Greg noted that. “I believe there are still some formalities to which you must attend,” Mycroft said, waving the umbrella gently in the direction of the door to the tunnel. Nothing was strafed. 

Rafferty looked to Lestrade, who nodded. “It will save time.” Greg swept his gaze over the path in both directions and up the hill to the fence of the cemetery. “We may as well be going, then,” he said and took a step towards the bridge. Rafferty didn’t see Lestrade sway. 

“The tunnel will be shorter,” Mycroft said.

“The caretaker locked up after we searched it,” Rafferty explained.

The brass shanks of keys chimed against one another as Mycroft drew them out of his pocket. Lestrade patted his coat and realised his set must be at the bottom of the canal. “After you, gentlemen,” Mycroft said as he pushed the door open. Rafferty turned towards Lestrade. He tilted his head for Rafferty to proceed. For an instant when the door closed, the darkness closed in around them. A beam of bluish light dispelled it and Lestrade stepped ahead of Rafferty to follow it. 

“Just here,” Mycroft said and paused by the metal door they had admired earlier. The keys jangled again. “Mind the threshold,” Mycroft warned and shone the light ahead of them. It traced an efficient arc to the spiral stairs, glittering flashes answering the the brief stroke of light. Lestrade followed the beam upwards through the opening to the upper floor and Rafferty followed him, his exclamations of wonder not quite suppressed.

“A couple paces to the side, if you would,” Mycroft directed as he stepped onto the floor, the brass outlines reflecting back the light. Carefully, he raised the trap door from where it rested on the stone and lowered it into position. The lock clicked and Mycroft straightened, keys tinkling again as he unlocked the last portal and the moist night air rushed in. Two cars waited, the headlamps of one flicking on as Mycroft emerged onto the grass verge of the mausoleum and twisted his keys for the final time. He turned to Rafferty who tried not to gape. “Our precise route will not appear in your report, of course,” Mycroft said. 

Once more, Rafferty’s wide eyes sought Greg’s and Greg nodded. “Yes, sir,” Rafferty said.

“Stop by Bart’s morgue before you make your preliminary report, Rafferty.” The young officer’s head bobbed. “We can go over it tomorrow.”

“Medical advice permitting,” Mycroft added and Rafferty’s gaze shifted to Mycroft momentarily.

Greg raised a dismissive hand. “Yeah, fine. Doctor’s orders permitting. Off you go, Rafferty.”

Rafferty rapped on the window of the waiting police car. His colleagues looked up in acknowledgement as he opened the back door and slid in. The gravel crunched as the car pulled away.

“A satisfactory evening’s work,” Mycroft said. Greg felt a hand beneath his elbow when he listed slightly as they moved towards the last car. “Once we get you dried off and patched up, some sustenance will be in order.” 

Mycroft tugged on the lapels of Greg’s trench coat and Greg let him peel it and his jacket away before he stepped into the car. He slumped against the leather seats and realised that the idea of food made him nauseous. He shivered. Mycroft draped his overcoat over Greg. “The driver is very good,” Mycroft said. “It won’t take too long.” Greg barely felt the movement of the vehicle. “Kick your shoes off,” Mycroft instructed and tucked a sleeve of his coat behind Greg’s arm. It was warm. The velvet of the collar brushed against his chin. Greg pushed against the heel of one shoe with his other foot. With a squelch the shoe came off. “They’re keeping your feet cold,” Mycroft said and leaned down to help remove the other shoe and then the socks. A floor vent sent a gust of hot air over the damp skin and up under the cuffs of his trousers. It felt remarkably good. 

*** 

There was a hint of wood smoke in the air, but no alarm bells rang in his head. He took a deeper breath. He felt the back of a hand on his forehead. It smelt like roses. It had been a long time since anyone had checked him for fever like that. 

He remembered the anxiety on his mother’s face as she drew her hand away. He’d asked for oranges and his voice had sounded more like a croak than anything else. She’d kissed his forehead then. _Anything for you, cheri. Anything.”_ Something warm had dripped on his brow and he’d wondered why she had heated the orange juice before he drifted back to sleep. Later he’d learned he’d been unconscious for two days, his fever too high. Children still died from measles then. He’d been so relieved there had been vaccines for Charlotte. She’d never had worse than a bad cold as a child. He’d never had to endure that fear.

Greg opened his eyes. The room was almost dark, a little light seeping in around a nearly closed door. The aroma of wood smoke drifted from that direction. There was a faint ache behind his eyes and his mouth felt dry. He looked around the room and found a face, lit by the screen of some portable device. 

“Water,” he whispered and the face nodded. A hand reached out for his forehead. So he hadn’t dreamt that part. 

“The fever’s nearly gone,” the woman said. Her voice was professional, detached, unlike her touch. She held a capped cup with a straw out to Lestrade, placed the straw between his lips. He took a sip and closed his eyes. She started to ease the cup away. He bit down on the straw. She stopped. He took another sip and opened his mouth. The cup was placed on the nightstand. “Just double-checking,” she said and inserted something in Lestrade’s ear. It was cool. It beeped and was withdrawn. “Thirty-seven point two.” 

Greg started to roll to his side. A sharp twinge in his shoulder and a firm hand on his chest stopped him. “Wait,” the woman said and Greg eased back against the mattress in compliance, let his heart rate settle back down. A finger touched the inside of his forearm, trailed up towards the delicate skin inside his elbow. “We have to unhook this first,” she said and Greg turned his head to watch her slide the tube out of the vein in his arm. 

“Nurse?” he began and his voice sounded closer to normal. 

“Doctor,” she said. “You’ve had a transfusion and intravenous antibiotics. You’d lost more blood than you realised, at least that’s what I conclude from the reports of your behaviour after your injury.” 

The doctor looped the tubing over the stand and slid an arm under Greg’s shoulders. He could see how tall she was when she stood next to the stand, tall and broad in the shoulders. He had a flash of what she might look like in a bathing suit and smiled. “Either that or you share some foolhardy traits with a few other people of my acquaintance. Let me take most of your weight,” she said. 

_A Valkyrie,_ he mused as a thick blonde plait slipped over her shoulder.

“I don’t want your wound to open. It wasn’t very deep, but it was long.” 

Greg recalled the sting of it before he’d knocked his attacker’s arm away and they had both tumbled overboard in the struggle and the cold, dark water had closed over their heads. 

“There,” the doctor said and stood back for a moment. “Let your blood pressure adjust to being upright and use your left arm for balance.” 

Greg let his stomach settle before attempting to stand. “I think I’m hungry,” he said, sitting back down. 

“I’ll tell Mr Holmes,” the doctor said. 

Greg looked around the room slowly, realising why it had felt familiar and why he could smell wood burning. “He’s here?” Greg asked. 

“Working in the other room,” the doctor replied. “I’ll give him your status report on my way out.” Greg’s eyes darted back to the doctor. “I’ll wait until you’ve made it to the loo and back before I go.” 

Greg rubbed his hand over his face. “How much pain killer do I have in me?” he asked, considering the distance to the bathroom door. 

“A minimal amount,” she said. “You must not take much regularly. You slept very soundly.” 

“How long?” Greg asked and tried standing again. He stayed upright by the bed for a couple minutes. 

“Almost nineteen hours.” Greg stared. “You did wake up a few times. Even made it to the loo and back just as I arrived, but you went straight back to sleep.” 

“Not as young as I used to be,” Greg sighed and took a step away from the bed and then another. “I’d like to shower,” he said when he reached the bathroom door.” 

“No showering, but you can bathe as long as you keep the bandages dry. I can tape them for you,” the doctor said. “Try cleaning your teeth first, see how you feel. I’ll wait here.” 

“Right,” Greg said. “One step at a time.” 

*** 

“I’m off, then, Mycroft.” 

“Thank you, Athene. I appreciate it,” Mycroft said, setting down the phone and getting up from his desk. “Are you sure you can’t stay for dinner?” He reached for her coat, held it open for her. “I realise it was tedious, but the security, you know...” 

“Sometimes taking a break from my research helps me think. A little distance from the details.” Dr Susana smiled as she buttoned her coat, knotted her scarf. “He’s on the right side?” she asked and tilted her face for a kiss. 

“He’s not on the wrong side,” Mycroft replied, kissing one cheek and then the other. 

“I hope that’s enough,” Athene said. “He seems rather sweet, but then he was mainly asleep.” She raised an eyebrow at the flush across Mycroft’s face. “I left him in the bath. He should be fine, but best to check on him in a little while.” She slipped on her gloves. “Call me tomorrow, if you need me.” 

Mycroft leaned against the closed door and stared across the room at the entry to the hallway that lead to the bedrooms beyond. 

*** 

Greg turned his head, ran a hand over his jaw. It was mainly smooth. He’d missed a spot or two on the left side. He’d felt the stitches pulling as his arm moved. He tried a splash of the aftershave on the counter. It reminded him of the ocean. The bottle was grey glass, blue when he held it up to the light, the cap silver. There was no name on it anywhere. _Maybe it’s the colour._ He set the bottle down, waved his hand beneath his nose. He could smell the waves. Almost see the wind whipping them into white caps. He wiped his hand over his chest. 

He felt fairly steady on his feet as he made his way into the bedroom, found the slippers by the bed. The dark cotton of the pyjamas clung to his back. He hadn’t been able to dry it properly. He tried shrugging it loose. He winced and put on the quilted robe lying across the bottom of the bed, smoothed his hand over the deep brown silk. He heard the fire crackling as he moved down the hall, stopped in the archway to survey the room, to see if Mycroft were still in it. 

“I was going to come see if you were all right if you didn’t emerge soon, Inspector,” Mycroft’s voice rose like smoke from the other side of the high-backed chair facing away from the arch. 

“It would have been a pity to drown in the bath after managing to avoid doing it in the canal,” Greg retorted, making his way to the other chair before the hearth. 

“I listened at the door a couple times to make sure you hadn’t been overcome,” Mycroft explained. “I’ve ordered dinner. It will be here in a few minutes. I understand you are hungry. That’s a good sign, I believe.” 

Greg settled back into the embrace of the chair, its leather warm from the fire. A sigh of satisfaction and relief escaped him. Bathing and dressing, even in pyjamas, had taken more out of him that he cared to admit. “Yes, I suppose it is.” He stretched his legs out towards the flames. “I haven’t slept that much in years.” 

“You haven’t been wounded in years,” Mycroft replied. 

“I’ve had my share of getting knocked about during arrests,” Greg responded. 

“Sore muscles and bruises are not to be discounted certainly, but you haven’t been stabbed in a long while. The body needs time to recover.” 

The firelight flickered over Mycroft’s profile. He didn’t turn to look at Greg and Greg didn’t bother to ask how Mycroft knew that. 

“There’s spring water and lime on the table next to you. You need to stay hydrated,” Mycroft said. “No spirits allowed, of course.” 

“I don’t recall coming here,” Greg replied, picking up the drink. “I don’t recall the hospital really.” 

“Between the hypothermia and the blood loss, you weren’t fully conscious by the time we reached St Bartholomew’s.” 

Greg merely murmured. 

“I had Dr…I had Susana meet us there. She dressed your wound and when you objected to remaining in the hospital overnight, I asked her to sign the papers discharging you into my care.” Mycroft turned to Lestrade. “You couldn’t have remained alone.” 

“No,” Greg admitted and raised his glass towards Mycroft. “Cheers for that. I hate hospitals.” 

“The ferryman, as it were, that you apprehended has already shed a great deal of light on the most recent murders despite his personal dimness. He didn’t think uninterrupted communication of great consequence.” Mycroft took a sip of wine. “He dropped his mobile in the canal two days ago and thought he’d wait until he got down to London with his ‘cargo’ to replace it.” Mycroft paused, tapping his fingers against his wine glass. “The latest victims were young diplomats, on holiday, supposedly hiking in the Lake District.” He sighed. “Perhaps we will be able to assure that they are the last.” 

Three notes chimed and Mycroft stood. “That should be our dinner,” he said and walked to the door. Lestrade stared at the empty chair, noticed the curve of an umbrella handle over the arm. He got up carefully and retrieved it, held it cautiously between his knees when he sat back down. 

There was a murmur from the other room, the sound of the door shutting and the faint creak of trolley wheels over carpet. “Ah,” Mycroft said as he parked the trolley between the chairs. “I thought you might wish to examine that.” 

Greg ran his fingers along the curve of the umbrella handle. “Yes. Thought I might be hallucinating, when I saw you holding the suspect at umbrella point.” Greg held the umbrella by the handle and lifted it higher. “It would be more accurate to say that _you_ apprehended the suspect. He got away from me.” 

“A joint effort, then,” Mycroft conceded. “Shall I show you the mechanisms?” 

Greg glanced to the side and nodded. “Probably best that I don’t shoot a hole in your floor and eliminate any of your neighbours.” 

“There are the display rooms for an art dealer immediately below,” Mycroft said, seating himself on the arm of Greg’s chair. “I don’t think you’d have hit anyone at this hour.” He leaned past Greg and flipped the lens of a scope up from the front of the handle. “Sight through it,” Mycroft said and Greg raised the umbrella towards the mantlepiece. “Trace your finger along the inside curve of the handle and press the smooth button. 

Greg felt between the three buttons along the curved surface, found the smooth one and pressed. A red light danced over the marble. He glanced up. 

Mycroft watched the red dot for a few seconds before looking down. “The next button, with the diagonal ridge, releases the safety.” Greg raised an eyebrow. “Press once,” Mycroft said. “Pressing again relocks it.” 

Greg pressed and a soft snick reached his ears. 

Mycroft slid his hand under the furled umbrella and nudged it up towards the shadows at the top of the bookshelves. “The last button fires. Press it,” he said. 

It seemed more than a little reckless, but they were at the top of the building. Greg pressed. There was a soft phfft and something tumbled from above the highest shelf. Lestrade felt for the safety and clicked it; he pointed the umbrella at the carpet. Mycroft rose from the arm of the chair, moving between the furniture around the fire like a column of smoke. He bent down to retrieve something from the floor. “An excellent shot,” he said as he held up something Greg still couldn’t see clearly. Mycroft walked through the firelight and Greg had a brief flashback from a case that had led him and three officers through the London zoo on a warm summer’s night. 

“Considering I didn’t know what I was aiming at, I can’t take much credit for the kill,” Greg replied, squinting at what Mycroft held in his hands. “A sea turtle?” Lestrade queried, taking in the creature’s flippers. Mycroft set the animal in Greg’s lap. The bullet had pierced the underside of the shell, but not emerged from the top. “Small calibre,” Greg murmured. 

“Hard shell. And whoever killed it, did it long ago,” Mycroft replied, lifting the covers from two bowls. The aroma of melted Gruyere and stewed onion curled up from them. 

Greg considered the animal’s extended neck and small tail. “Excellent taxidermy job,” he offered, not sure what else to say. It wasn’t a pretty specimen of aquatic life. “Aren’t they endangered?” 

Mycroft opened the leaves of the trolley, set a plate and bowl on either side, a linen serviette and a silver spoon next to each. “Technically, I believe it is illegal to possess him. Mycroft lifted the turtle, looked at one of its beady eyes. “But he was an official gift I received after some intricate law of the sea treaty negotiations I concluded many years ago and I don’t seem able to divest myself of him.” Mycroft set the turtle on a footstool and nudged his chair closer to their impromptu dining table. “He’s frightened more than a few people, looking down from his perch. Most don’t notice him.” Mycroft gestured at the soup. “Shall we?” 

Greg’s eyes flicked back to the creature. Its front flippers extended past the cushion on the footstool and the flames cast bands of undulating shadows across his shell. Head raised defiantly, he seemed to be navigating some remembered sea. Greg looked down at the table, lifted his spoon. “I hadn’t noticed him,” he said. 

“I don’t think you would have been frightened if you had,” Mycroft replied and broke the crust over the soup. 

*** 

Greg lay on his side watching a blue light pulse in the other room as Mycroft’s laptop charged in the dark. It hadn’t been a surprise that Mycroft had insisted that Greg remain at least another night. Overseeing his recovery seemed to be some duty that Mycroft had undertaken. What had been a surprise was when Mycroft walked to the bookcases which covered one wall of the guestroom and moved something that caused one column of book shelves to swing open. “In case you feel poorly in the night, I will hear you,” Mycroft had said. “Fevers are unpredictable.” 

The light had been dim in the other bedroom as Mycroft prepared to sleep. Greg had heard the sound of water from what he supposed was another en suite, the sound of a few doors opening and closing. The lights in the bedroom had never been switched on. Greg wondered if Mycroft had disrobed in the bath or if he had a dressing room. Considering the grandeur of the flat and how impeccably Mycroft dressed, a dressing room seemed likely. 

Greg closed his eyes on the blue light, called back the details of the smoking jacket Mycroft had been wearing during the evening. He’d wanted to touch the velvet of the sleeve when Mycroft had sat on the arm of his chair. Greg smiled to himself. That might be considered the point of wearing fabrics that were so obviously soft, the nap and lustre of them calling out to be stroked. Then again, Mycroft might simply have the habit of wearing a smoking jacket when he occasionally had the chance to relax in the evening. Greg ran his fingertips along the linen on which he was lying. _When did you realise I was such a tactile man, Mycroft?_

His fingers had darted out to stroke the engraving along the blade Mycroft had drawn from the second umbrella. Mycroft had stowed the used dishes on a lower shelf of the trolley and dropped the leaves. “Shall we pause before the next course?” he had asked. 

Greg found himself nodding against his pillow as he had nodded in reply. 

Mycroft had walked back to his desk to retrieve a second umbrella. Greg had noticed an umbrella stand in the foyer. He rolled onto his back. _Did you arrange the props before I woke up? Everything near to hand for the…for the what? The seduction?_

Greg’s hand slipped beneath his pyjama top, Mycroft’s pyjama top, patted his stomach. They had eaten at a leisurely pace. Greg exhaled. There had been pomegranate seeds and mandarin slices and nasturtium blossoms bright amidst the greens in the salad. It had been almost too pretty to disrupt with a fork, that little Eden on his plate. He had closed his mouth around a nasturtium bloom and looked across the table. Mycroft had been watching. _Twenty years ago, I would have thought you wanted my body. Now, my secrets seem equally desirable. It’s what you toasted after all._

His left his hand over his belly. It was full, not too full, perfectly full. 

He’d savoured the flavours on his tongue, the textures, and Mycroft had begun to speak of the plants and fish on the coral reefs where ‘his’ species of sea turtle lived. The colours he’d described had matched the flavours. Greg knew how vivid those colours were. Afterwards, he’d talked of the times he had gone scuba diving in the Red Sea and had wished he spoke German because all the other tourists there seemed to. On one trip, Charlotte had fallen in love with a toy camel with purple eyes. They had bargained for it and she’d carried it home victoriously on the plane. It still sat, somewhat worse for wear, by the bed in her room in his flat. He’d made a point to have a room for her if she wanted to stay over the holidays. A small smile had flitted about Mycroft’s lips then. He hadn’t been surprised at all. 

And later, when Mycroft paused halfway between his desk and their chairs and drew the sword out of the closed umbrella, held it for an instant as though testing the balance before offering it to Greg, it had been Greg’s turn not to be surprised. Mycroft moved like a fencer, he had the keen eye of someone who saw the deadly opening, the fatal mistake. The blade had been cold and beautiful in his hands. 

“These are concealed weapons, you know,” Greg said as he touched the edge. He stood, held the blade out. It was light. 

“I have the necessary permits, of course,” Mycroft replied and that half smile brightened his expression again. 

“I won’t have to arrest you, then,” Greg replied with a grin. He began to trace a figure eight in the air, when his shoulder registered its objection to the exercise. 

Mycroft took the sword. “I have a piste upstairs.” 

Greg tilted his head as if he might see through the ceiling to what lay above. “I haven’t practiced in years and years,” he said, his eyes back on the blade in Mycroft’s hand. His foil had been another of the things his wife had given away. A waste of space, she had said, and dangerous, too. 

“But you miss it,” Mycroft remarked. “If you feel up to it, we can have a look after dinner.” Mycroft slid the sword into its umbrella sheath and leaned it against his desk. He turned towards the hearth again. “First, however, I need to set fire to dessert.” 

Greg laughed when he saw what it was. It had been so many years since he’d had cherries jubilee. His grandmother had made it for birthdays. He and his cousins had felt proud when she deemed them old enough to make it for them. 

He turned on his side again, found the blue light in the next room and wondered if there was any way Mycroft could have known any of that. 

*** 

_Beneath his bare feet, the flags were smooth; against his fingertips, the stone wall damp. A bead of moisture dropped. He wiped it from his face, took another careful step. The floor sloped. He stumbled, arm flung out, catching knives. His cry echoed. Along his arm, pain burned bright; throwing sparks into the darkness. He saw the shards and blades, edges outwards and gleaming. The passageway narrowed, the floor fell away. As he plummeted, he screamed._

The pressure was firm against his chest. 

_The sand was cool on his back. He heard the murmur of the waves, smelt the fresh salt of the sea._

*** 

Greg blinked a couple times, opened his mouth without producing a sound, cleared his throat. 

Susana looked up from the book she was reading. 

“I thought doctors sitting by bedsides went out of fashion a couple generations ago,” he said. 

Susana smiled, set the book aside and stood. “Can always use a chance to catch up on my reading.” She checked her watch before uncapping the bottle on the night table. “Sit up slowly and drink a bit.” 

"No help this time?” Greg asked, sliding gradually up against the bolster behind his pillow. He took a few breaths before he reached for the water bottle. 

“I wanted to see how well you did.” 

“Did I pass, Doctor?” Greg asked. 

“We’ll see what you look like under here before I commit to anything,” Susana replied as she unbuttoned Greg’s pyjama top and drew it aside. 

“You fence, too?” Greg enquired with a smile. 

“Very smooth,” Susana murmured as she raised the edge of the dressing. 

“Technique or physique?” 

Susana lifted the bandage away, dropped it in the waste bin and regarded Greg silently. Despite their deep green colour, Greg wondered whether there was a sister in the family that neither Sherlock nor Mycroft had mentioned. She’d more likely be named Morgana if she were, but who was to say that Susana was the woman’s real name. 

“The wound is healing well. Sleep knits up more than the ravell’d sleeve of care,” she said, picking up a phone and sliding it open. 

“I’m not sure I slept so well last night,” he said. “There was an unpleasant dream in there somewhere.” 

“I heard,” Susana responded, tapping. “But you didn’t pull any of the stitches, and you’ve slept a number of hours since.” 

Greg’s eyes shifted to the solid wall of books dividing the room from Mycroft’s. _I woke you._

“Lunch should be here shortly,” Susana announced, snapping the phone shut. “If you eat it and rest a while afterwards, I may see fit to release you upon your own recognisance,” Susana replied. 

Greg looked at her, one eyebrow slightly raised at the phrasing, but the urge to quip had evaporated. “I’d rather dress and head out now.” 

The doctor shook her head. “Mycroft already ordered.” 

Greg sat a little higher against the pillows. “I thought _you_ just ordered.” 

“No, I just informed the kitchen that it could be sent up,” Susana answered, setting the materials for a new dressing on the side of the bed. “Let’s get this done before they get here.” 

On cue, Greg’s stomach rumbled. “Sorry,” he said, flushing slightly. “Will you join us this time?” 

Susana snipped off a piece of tape. “I can join _you_ ,” she answered. “Mr Holmes had to catch an early flight this morning.” 

“Ah,” Greg said, settling more heavily against the pillows and wondering if the good doctor’s task had been more to watch him than to watch over him. 

*** 

“Sir?” Rafferty said, rising from his desk when Lestrade strode past towards the end of the afternoon. The sergeant followed Lestrade into his office. “You aren’t supposed to be here until Monday at the earliest.” 

Greg looked around his office as though expecting the furniture to have been re-arranged. “According to whom?” 

“The doctor at the hospital, sir,” Rafferty replied. “She said if you didn’t agree, she would admit you.” Greg sat down in his chair, winced and frowned at the young detective. “And you agreed, sir.” 

Greg let out a long sigh. “Fine,” he said. “Get me copies of the files. I’ll take them home.” 

“All ready on my desk, sir,” Rafferty said, his shoulders relaxing. “I knew you’d want them.” He took a step towards the door and paused. 

Greg stared at him for an instant. “Yes, go get them,” he said. “You can brief me on developments before I leave.” 

“No need, sir. I’ve been keeping a log of events. I was finishing the latest entry when you came in.” 

“Right,” Lestrade said. “Bring it along.” 

Greg watched Rafferty bound out the door. He slipped his hand under his jacket and rubbed his shoulder. _Getting a bit old for this part._

Rafferty reappeared almost immediately. “I can carry them down for you, sir,” he said. 

“Down?” Greg asked. He was about to protest Rafferty’s presumption when he saw the height of the stack in Rafferty’s arms. 

“Dr Susana called to remind me about your going home. She said the car was waiting for you downstairs,” Rafferty finished. 

“On a first name basis, are you?” he groused, getting up from his chair. 

Rafferty’s brows drew together and then he smiled. “I believe Susana’s her family name, sir. At least that’s how she signed your medical report.” He touched his chin to the top of the stack. “A copy of that’s in here, too, sir.” 

_At least it’s not Holmes,_ Greg thought, following Rafferty out the door. _Of course, she could be using a married name or an alias._

It was Anthea who was in the back seat of the Jaguar when Rafferty ducked in to place the stack of files next to Greg on the leather seat. Greg saw Rafferty take in the interior before he drew back. 

“See you Monday, sir,” Rafferty said, turning an admiring look towards Greg before he closed the door. 

“You safeguarding the transport of the files, in case any of your other long-lost friends turn up in here?” Greg asked Anthea’s comely profile. She murmured noncommittally, without looking up. Greg glanced back at the footpath. Rafferty stood gazing after the car. 

“We’re giving that lad a highly inaccurate impression of life in the Met,” he grumbled as the sedan turned a corner. Next to him, Anthea murmured at her Blackberry screen. 

*** 

Molly opened the door to the quarantine room off the morgue with her shoulder, eyes on the clipboard in her hand. The door to the supply cupboard squeaked faintly as she entered. 

“Oh, Sherlock! ‘Morning,” Molly said as Sherlock stepped out of the cupboard. 

His eyes narrowed at Molly. “You look tired.” He looked down to her shoes and up to her hair. “Not a date. You worked late and are in early.” He turned and scanned the remains occupying every table in the room. Glancing back over his shoulder, Sherlock asked, “Transport for London tunnelling through another graveyard?” He walked to the closest body, its grey handlebar moustache bristling over shrivelled skin and yellowed teeth. “Why are they in quarantine? Spanish influenza?” He stepped to the next body, bent close, pulled a pen from his pocket and lifted the long hair from the neck. He stood, leaned over the body. “Bullet to the back of the neck. Small calibre. Severed the spinal cord.” He strolled to the next body. “Decapitated. Head reunited with the body. How considerate.” 

Sherlock strode back to Molly. “It’s too early for Christmas. Where did these come from?” 

“The cemetery by the Grand Union Canal. There’re more filling the drawers in the main morgue,” Molly replied. “The first ones came in the day before yesterday. Lestrade had said there might be more.” Molly looked away. 

Sherlock’s hand settled on Molly’s arm. She raised her eyes. “What’s wrong with Lestrade.” 

“It wasn’t as bad as it seemed when he came in. Gave me a scare though. He’d swallowed a good deal of canal water apprehending a suspect. Greg was here for a few hours, had a knife wound stitched up before Mycroft took him home,” Molly said. 

Sherlock’s eyebrows rose. He turned back to the corpses. “Why is Mycroft interested in you?” he asked. 

“One of the first bodies was taken away before I’d finished my report. I kept photos and my preliminary notes though,” Molly offered. 

Sherlock smiled over his shoulder. “Oh, you wonderful girl.” Molly beamed as she followed him. Sherlock peered from side to side, bent over a few of the cadavers before continuing around the room. “And the bodies get progressively _fresher_ , as it were,” he stated when they arrived back at the door to the main morgue. Molly nodded. “Send the file up to the Rare Books Room and reserve some time in Lab Nine for the afternoon.” Sherlock sighed. “Why must Lestrade get a case like _this_ while I’m dead?” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Author's Note:**

> Those who have read [Silk Road](http://archiveofourown.org/works/619337) may recall an enthusiastic young officer from Cirencester named Rafferty. In my mind, Rafferty is the name of the character listed as "Young Policeman" in the credits for ASiB, the one who tells John that the helicopter is for him. In my AU, Rafferty has transferred down to London, been promoted to detective sergeant, and is now working for Lestrade.


End file.
